Official: Results for lower-court judges not available online until Wednesday

Retention results for the Iowa Court of Appeals and many district court judges will not be available online until Wednesday, a state elections employee said today.

Jarrett Schneider, a spokesman for the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, said vote counters will have results posted for the three Iowa Supreme Court justices who are up for retention late Tuesday.

Vote totals for lower-court judges will become available online the following day, Schneider said. Schneider said the results may be released late Tuesday to media who request it, but added that they will not become available until sometime around midnight.

Polk County Auditor Jamie Fitzgerald said his office should have unofficial results for the 13 judges in District 5C (Polk County) sometime around 9:30 p.m.

Polk is the only county statewide that stands as its own judicial sub-district. All other judges from district courts will appear on ballots in multiple counties. Counties certify their results and send them to the Secretary of State, which totals the results for each sub-district.

Judges on the Court of Appeals face a statewide retention vote.

Judicial retention has received little attention historically. Voting records in the past two non-presidential elections shows that only 60 percent of Iowa voters answered the retention questions for justices and appeals-court judges.

But several groups this year have targeted Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and her two colleagues, Justices Michael Streit and David Baker, for their part in the opinion last year that allowed same-sex marriage.

Supporters of the justices and the merit-selection system say the removal campaigns are a misguided attempt to politicize the courts. Groups that want the justices out say they defied the constitution.